Precious Things
by Anna Authorina
Summary: Ten years after the Crouch-Lestrange trials, a close encounter at Hogwarts leads Aurora Sinistra to reflect on the life she once had and the people she has lost.


**Precious Things**

_September 1991_

The tolling of the great school bell penetrated even the thick walls of Hogwarts Castle, drawing the first years' attention away from the moon globes on their desks at once. Stepping away from Terry Boot, who had been having trouble finding one of the landmarks on his list, Aurora Sinistra gave the mix of Ravenclaw and Gryffindor eleven-year-olds one of her rare smiles.

"You may go," she said. "Place your moon charts on my desk on your way out. Don't forget that tonight is our first star observation."

As the students moved toward the door, most chattering enthusiastically, Aurora Summoned the moon globes to her own desk. Occupied with putting them away, she did not notice the two students who had remained behind until one of them cleared her throat.

Tucking an errant brown curl behind her ear, Aurora straightened up and glanced between them. Both faces already had names attached to them, though for very different reasons. "Can I help you?" she asked.

"Yes, Professor," Hermione Granger said, her tones as precise and serious as if she were an academic of fifty. It was strangely endearing. "Neville has a question."

Aurora turned her head so she was looking directly at Neville Longbottom, whose round face was a picture of consternation. Hers remained smooth. "Yes, Mr. Longbottom?"

Neville couldn't seem to meet her eyes. "I," he started, and then stopped to clear his throat. "I, er, I forgot my telescope, Professor."

Aurora's brow creased in confusion. "Forgot it where, Mr. Longbottom?"

"At – at home?" He sounded utterly miserable. "I left a lot of things at home. My gran's been sending them to me since the second day." He looked down at his shoes. "I guess she hasn't found my telescope yet."

Aurora studied the top of his dark hair and a strip of reddening forehead. "I'm sure she will soon," she told him. "We do have a small supply of school telescopes, Mr. Longbottom. You may use one of them for this week's observation."

Neville looked up at her, his expression going rapidly from stunned wonder to a happy grin. She felt as though she'd been struck, hard, in the chest. "Thanks, Professor," he whispered.

"Not at all," she said. "Now, I believe you should both be going to…Charms, isn't it?"

Hermione's air of assurance vanished as her expression changed to one of worry. "Oh, no," she gasped. "I mean, yes, Professor. Thank you! Come on, Neville, we shouldn't be late – "

When they were gone, Aurora sat down slowly, gazing at the classroom wall with her eyes out of focus. She had been dreading this since she left – or was pushed out of, depending on whose opinion one asked – the Department of Mysteries, but the fact of having to face Neville Longbottom had only really come home to her a few weeks earlier, when she had volunteered to help Minerva McGonagall with the outgoing first year acceptance letters. Though he had arrived for each meeting of the day classes meant to prepare the students for night observations, she had somehow managed to avoid speaking to him directly until now.

It had not been as bad as she had expected. In fact, apart from the blow of seeing a smile so close to Frank's on a face like Alice's, it had not been much different from dealing with any other student. Aurora did not like to think what that said about her.

Objectively, of course, she had nothing to feel guilty about. She had never raised her voice to Frank or Alice, never mind her wand. She would not have done so if she had been given the opportunity, and she would have reported any plot she knew of by others to harm them. No matter who that plot was supposed to involve.

It was good, she thought, some hours later, as she reentered her room after dinner, to see that Neville and Hermione seemed to get along. Aurora had not missed the way the other Gryffindors in their year, boys and girls alike, had neatly divided into pairs, leaving the two of them out. In her experience, as much as a professor as an eighteen-year-old file clerk, having a young witch or wizard feel excluded could never lead to anything good.

Not that Neville Longbottom would ever be like _him_, of course. Neville was no more capable of being like him than Hermione was of being like – well – Aurora Sinistra. The circumstances were wrong. The times were wrong. The children were wrong.

At least, that was what she told herself as she settled into her chair for a nice, long essay-grading session. It had been years since she had presumed to think her evaluations of people were generally accurate.

It was not long before her eyes wandered from Oliver Wood's thoughts on the moons of Jupiter to a mahogany box on top of her bureau.

It was not a large thing, nor was it a very noticeable one. There was a bit of fancy carving on the lid, and the wood was kept well-polished, but that was all. In the first velvet-lined tray, she kept her few pieces of jewelry: her grandmother's diamond ring, her father's watch, the star earrings and necklace she kept for staff parties, a few brooches. It was the things she kept beneath her jewelry, though, that she wanted to see now. She had not looked at them for a long time, and she felt the need to see that they were still there.

At the bottom of the box was a small collection of letters, newspaper clippings, and photographs, all dated from the late seventies or early eighties. She was careful of them, but they were beginning to show their ages: newsprint looked blurrier, photos looked dimmer, and handwriting seemed to have faded a little, especially on the creases. Only three other things were in the bottom of the box: a little drawstring bag, a gold ring set with an amethyst, and a black button.

Her eyes on the button, Aurora picked up the ring and slipped it on her left hand. It felt cool and foreign against her finger. She had worn it for months after what she thought of as the Incident made it pointless, defying the stares and disapproving whispers it earned her; she no longer quite remembered why, or why she'd finally taken it off and consigned it to this little box with a bag holding a withered posy and the button her fiancé had proposed with.

November 1, 1981. The whole world had gone mad; it had been the wildest debauch Aurora had ever seen, and reports now claimed it had come closer to revealing the Wizarding World to its Muggle counterpart than any other event of the war years against You-Know-Who. Stressed and running late, she had stepped out of the flooplace to find the Atrium of the Ministry in a state of celebration and had promptly been swept into a hug by a screaming Alberta Edgecombe, a witch she had been no more than casually acquainted with, and had almost gone into a state of shock when she finally pieced together what was going on – that You-Know-Who was dead.

She hadn't even known James and Lily Potter were also dead until the party was broken up by news of Sirius Black turning Peter Pettigrew into mincemeat. No one had seemed to want to think about that part. All anyone had cared to hear was that the long terror was over and that they could all go to bed at night with the assurance of waking up. Extracting herself from Madam Edgecombe, she had struggled toward the center of the Atrium, where Millicent Bagnold had soon had the Fountain of Magical Brethren placed to symbolize the new era of freedom and unity the Dark Lord's death had ushered in, in the certainty that Barty, along with his parents, would be there. Where else would they be? They had all been born for center stage.

Her analysis of Bartemius and Cassandra Crouch had not proved misguided: they, with their son, had been receiving congratulations for some time. The two Mr. Crouches had been shaking hands with everyone who approached them while Cassandra beamed up at her husband adoringly, all playing their parts in the family tableau to perfection…until Aurora and Barty had made eye contact. She wasn't sure how he'd managed it, but within five minutes, they'd been alone in one of the abandoned offices, his arms around her as she repeated, over and over again, that it was finally over.

Had he been planning – even then, if public opinion was correct – to try to keep it from being over? Had there been some look in his eyes, or a hesitation to his smile, that she had missed? That had haunted her for years afterward; when she thought about it, it haunted her still. Had he really helped the Lestranges kidnap and torture the Longbottoms? Had she, the very night before Augusta Longbottom found her mad son wandering around the house while his wife sat in a catatonic huddle by the oven, read poetry with someone who was capable of that and never suspected a thing?

It was easy, in hindsight, to think that she had or had not seen things that defended Barty or convicted him. It was harder to remember the actual details of the look on his face as he'd held her at arm's length. She own blend of shock and euphoria had clouded things, and time had only served to muddle it all up even further. "I love you," he had said, and then kissed her again.

She had not understood what he was doing as he took out his wand and pulled a button off his cloak until he had hit one knee and opened his hand so she could see what he had Transfigured the button into. "I have a real one at home," he had reassured her, "but I don't want to wait until the next time I see you." In her daze, all she had been able to think of was the look that would have been on his father's face if the senior Barty had been present. Bartemius Crouch had never thought she was good enough for his son. "Aurora, will you marry me?"

She had said yes. She had known it was foolish, agreeing to marry at eighteen while she was a file clerk for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and their parents were all against the match, but she had said yes. And it had paid off; only a week later, the Department of Mysteries, which had rejected her straight out of Hogwarts with the excuse that she was more needed by the Aurors, had politely approached her about joining their all-male space team. Frank Longbottom, who had always made a point of thanking her for any little thing she did for him and often joked about the amount of paperwork he saddled her with, had paused by her tiny little desk the day she packed her things up for the Department transfer.

"Onward and upward, I see." he had said, not disapprovingly. "Or should I say downward?"

"I'm not at liberty to divulge that information," she had said with a smile, and had been rewarded by his laugh.

"I'm going to miss you, Aurora," he'd said fondly. He was one of the very few Aurors who had ever bothered to learn her name, and the only one of those not to call her 'Sinistra'.

"You're the only thing about this department I'm going to miss," she had retorted. "I hated it here."

Frank had leaned against the edge of her desk, a thoughtful look on his face. "You know," he said. "I hate it, too. I hate that it's needed."

"And you know it always will be," she had said, unable to resist the lure of a serious conversation. She had been eighteen; participation in serious conversations had seemed like the highest mark of adulthood.

"It's why I'm here," he'd said, with his charming smile. "But we need good Unspeakables, too." He had put out his hand to shake hers. "Good luck, Aurora, and take notice that if you do not come to dinner next week of your own volition, Alice and I shall be forced to compel you to do so."

"I'll be there," she had promised. "I might defy you, Frank, but never Alice."

Everyone had known she was friendly with Frank, and everyone had known that the real ring Barty Crouch had, for whatever reason, given her the next day, long after the stand-in had reverted to a button she refused to return to him, had been set with an amethyst – a stone the Death Eaters had, unbeknownst to her, started decking their women in because of the association between purple and royalty. Those two facts had been enough to cast suspicion on her when Barty had been caught whispering with Rabastan, Rodolphus, and Bellatrix; they had almost convicted her as an informant, before Albus Dumbledore had stepped in. She still didn't know why he had saved her and not Barty, and there were times when she thought she might almost hate him for it.

He had saved her, though, and she knew it. He had saved her from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and he had saved her from the scandal that followed the Lestrange-Crouch trials. When the Ministry had turned on her and her colleagues had no longer wished to be associated with her, he had given her a job and a home at Hogwarts, as he'd done with others he pitied and despised. Aurora avoided the rest of the staff, when she could; she and Severus Snape, who she blamed for at least part of what had happened to Barty, had scarcely spoken since she took up her responsibilities as the Astronomy teacher.

She'd dreaded seeing Neville Longbottom. Until his Sorting, she had not laid eyes on him since he was a year old, and the Hat had kept her from seeing him clearly. She had been afraid he would know about her and Barty, and perhaps even blame her for what had happened to his parents. The reality of facing him had been quite different; apart from a small shock at his resemblance to Alice when she called the roll and the blow of Frank's smile, it had not been much different from dealing with any other student. Aurora did not like to think of what that said about her.

It was not until her hand tightened painfully on Barty's button that she realized she had picked it up and pressed her lips to her own fingers where they covered it. Slowly, she lowered her hand and put the button back on top of her engagement photograph. Even more slowly, she took off her ring and put it back, too. She replaced the top tray, closed the lid, and returned the box to its place.

When she sat back down, her cat, Galileo, jumped into her lap. She stroked his dark gray head absently, holding Mr. Wood's essay in the other as she resumed reading it. His reputation was that of a Quidditch fanatic, but he was actually quite bright; she hoped to recruit him into her NEWT class after his OWLs.

She was to have married Barty Crouch, Jr. in June of 1982, but he had gone to prison before that could happen. She had refused to believe in his guilt then, and part of her still did. He was dead now, though, and she had thought about him less and less each year since his death; if it had not been the year Neville Longbottom started at Hogwarts, Aurora might have left the top tray of her jewel box undisturbed until the spring. It had taken her a long time to realize it, but there were some things – however precious they were or had been – that were better left to the indistinct realms of the personal past.


End file.
